The year is 1951. Joseph Stalin has claimed that the Soviet Union now has an atomic bomb, the 22nd amendment has passed (a President can only serve two terms), and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.
In basketball news? It’s the year of the NBA’s inaugural All-Star game – Bob Cousy shot 2-12, and George Mikan 4-17 – and it’s played in the Boston Garden. Also, the Minneapolis Lakers win an NBA game against the Fort Wayne Pistons by a score of 68-64, and they do it shooting 20-percent from the field. The Raptors didn’t come close to matching that feat. They also aren’t the Huskies, who won a game 50-46 against the St. Louis Bombers while shooting 22.9-percent from the field. Oh, halcyon days when NBA teams called the city of Sheboygan, home. The 3-point shot didn’t exist, and neither did many of the styles of basketball that we see today.
The year before that matchup, the Pistons subjected the Lakers to a humiliating defeat by 1 point and a final score of 19-18. The Pistons played ‘keep away’ for much of the game, even as much of the crowd booed them and hurled insults their way. After the lowest scoring game in NBA history, Lakers coach Johnny Kundla said: “Play like that will kill professional basketball.”
Was the 24-second shot clock instituted the next day? No, it took 4 years.
The Pelicans didn’t have the benefit of tossing the ball around to burn seconds off the clock after jumping out to a 29-17 lead, like the Fort Wayne Pistons did. They just had to keep going about beating the brakes off of the Raptors in the natural ebb and flow of an NBA game. They did. They really did.
“I think it’s partially the makeup of the roster and what we’re trying to do.” Nick Nurse said after the Raptors loss, regarding the offensive rebounding. “But, there wasn’t anybody making any shots, I mean we shot 30-percent tonight, so there was a lot of them to get. That’s the other part of it for sure on a night like tonight. But, you know, there were some moments when those guys were fighting down there at least. Trying to do what they could do.”
The star duo of Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet faced down the length, attention, and tenacity of the Pelicans defense, and basically played 2-on-5 over the course of this game. Every drive was met with a dig down, a hot-on-the-heels primary defender, and Jonas Valanciunas’ larger than life presence sitting between them and the bucket. It was anxiety inducing to watch every possession where they were on ball, because their primary defender could hunt their dribble with no worry that their driving lane would be dangerous. Why? Because OG Anunoby, Scottie Barnes, and Gary Trent Jr. combined to shoot 5-30 from the field and the Pelicans didn’t care about rotating off of them.
It was horrible basketball.
Mixed in with that is the remarkable fact that the Raptors brass’ deadline decisions have put Coach Nurse in a position where the four best players off of his bench, are bigs. There is no ‘wing’ there is no ‘swingman’ in the games of Chris Boucher, Precious Achiuwa, Khem Birch, or Thad Young. Perhaps, when Young was, erm, Young-er he had enough off-the-dribble pop to emulate some of the hallmarks of shot-creation, but this is a different player.
It’s entirely possible that the Raptors have overplayed their hand in the “everyone is 6-foot-9” roster building scheme, and now they have 4 bench bigs that they have to try and find room for. All of them different, but with many overlapping skills. They’re teetering between “revolutionary” and “is this a joke?”.
The Raptors probably won’t look this bad again this season. We all witnessed a perfect storm of schematic nightmares, shooting performances, and just flat out poor play. What was clear last night was that Siakam and VanVleet didn’t have enough help. We’ll see if that remains the case over the rest of the season.
They aren’t the Minneapolis Lakers, though. There is no interesting wrinkle to mine from this game (unless someone digs it up in the future to point at how ridiculous or awesome the 4 bench bigs are), only a loss. Tough.
Have a blessed day.
